It is desirable for an instructor to maintain order and discipline in the classroom. Far too often, a teacher must repeat phrases, class announcements and give repetitive directions. As a result, a teacher may tend to be viewed more as taskmaster and baby-sitter than as instructor and muse.
Even well-behaved and motivated, but exuberant youngsters, would benefit from a method and apparatus which minimizes repetitious instructor commands, maximizes student cooperation and trains students in the practice of orderly behavior.
In the behavioral sciences, the importance of providing feedback has been long recognized. Feedback enables a person to know whether their behavior is appropriate. Young children in particular are somewhat deficient in this area and frequently need help in anticipating what is appropriate behavior. A visual indicator providing children in a classroom setting with feedback on what behavior is appropriate and when, could be a useful tool in the classroom.
Traffic lights and controllers are well known in the art. Moreover, children are trained, at an early age, as to the meaning of the sequence of colored lights in a traffic signal; green means go, red means stop, yellow means caution. Thus, most grade-school students intuitively understand the red/yellow/green signalling of a traffic light. Ramsey, U.S. Pat. No. 3,114,127 discloses an emergency traffic light which may be operated by remote control. Toy signals can be found in Sponsler, U.S. Pat. No. 2,520,445; Hathaway, U.S. Pat. No. 2,157,171 and Carl, U.S. Pat. No. 2,103,447.
Behavioral modification devices are also known in the art. Thomas, U.S. Pat. No. 3,600,826, discloses a plurality of signalling light assemblies for behavior modification, whereby clients of a therapist are isolated at light and switch stations such that each client can signal the other by means of lights.
Groff, U.S. Pat. No. 4,654,642, incorporated herein by reference, discloses an audio noise alarm, with indicators, for classrooms. Noise levels are monitored and an alarm circuitry activated when a predetermined noise level is reached. If a second noise level above the first incident occurs, an alarm may be triggered. Although Groff provides an audio alarm, it does not appear that Groff contemplates a visual alarm (other then a LED counter output) which may be readily seen by students. Although audio alarms are useful, they may not be heard over the din of student noise. Moreover, such audio alarms are useless for deaf students.
None of these references disclose the teaching and behavior modification of groups of students by utilizing a plurality of lights (alone or in combination with sounds) under remote control.